I earned a BS  in occupational therapy at Indiana University (1970) and MEd (1973) and PhD (1991) degrees in Special Education and Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.  After 16 years of practice in a variety of clinical settings, I assumed a faculty position and later the position of chair at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia. Since 2005 I have served as chair of the Department of Occupational Therapy at UTMB.

Over the past 10 years I have worked to expand educational opportunities for students in cross-cultural environments, helping to establish the first occupational therapy program in Izmit, Turkey in the aftermath of an earthquake and serving with the UTMB interprofessional health care team at the Maria Luisa Ortiz Womans Co-Op in Mulukuku, Nicaragua.  I am a member of the steering committee for the Collaborating Center for Training in International Health at UTMB and continue to serve as a consultant for curriculum development at Kocaeli Medical University, Izmit, Turkey.  This summer I will mentor three students from the School of Health Professions who are recipients of Fogarty International Research awards.  These students will conduct a research study on “Neuromusculoskeletal Pain and Daily Work Routines among Women Living in Rural Nicaragua.”

I have co- authored research papers on the topic of global health education which have been presented at international conferences, including “Curriculum Development in Cross-Cultural Environments: A Participatory Action Research Approach (World Federation for Occupational Therapists meeting in Sidney, Australia, 2005), “Strengthening Capacity through Interdisciplinary Work” (Global Health Education conference in Santo Domingo, 2007) and “Understanding Social Determinants of health: The value of Inter-professional Learning” ( the Medical Education for the 21^st Century:  Teaching for Health Equity conference, Havana, Cuba, 2008).

Health equity is important to me. My students and I interviewed 327 people who rode the buses during the evacuation for Hurricane Rita.  We were interested in capturing attitudes and feelings expressed by people who are especially vulnerable so that we could share this information with disaster preparedness personnel at the city and state level.  It was great to see my students at ease as they interviewed people and to see them invested in their own research which was presented at the American Public Health Association in fall, 2008.This year we administered a series of surveys to 95% of SHP students who were enrolled in on-campus classes last fall during Hurricane Ike. We were particularly interested in identifying students’ coping behaviors and how students describe what it means to be “vulnerable.” I continue to learn about the experience of vulnerability via my faculty practice work with “Our Daily Bread,” an NGO serving people who are homeless.  I have a richer understanding of this phenomena and a sincere affection for most of the people my students and I serve there.  I really like living in Galveston and the opportunity to pursue my primary research interests which include: (a) interactions among affect, regulation of affect, volition, and resulting self efficacy, specifically as a function of task engagement, (b)Transfer of learning from academic to practice settings, and (c)Interprofessional education. 

Glad to be part of the group.    Looking forward to the privilege of learning new things together.